I want to thank all my friends who have accepted the invitation to follow my adventures on The Melbourne Flâneur vlog.  As I commence my enterprise, offering a bespoke, artisanal approach to document preparation, it means a lot to me to have your support.

It’s also an honour and responsibility to produce online content for an audience who has committed to watch it.

In thinking about how to produce online content that is meaningful, engaging and valuable without bombarding or overwhelming you, I was influenced by Jasmine B. Ulmer’s article, “Writing Slow Ontology” (2017).

In the spirit of the ‘Slow’ movement (as in Slow Food, Slow Cities, etc.), I want to propose a ‘Slow’ approach to producing online content, one that does not bombard you with volume or overwhelm you with fast pace, one that is, as Ulmer says, ‘not unproductive’ but ‘differently productive’.

As opposed to the consumptive and disposable model of online content production that predominates, I won’t spam your inbox with clickbait.  You won’t hear from me often, but I hope that when you do receive notification of a new post, you will look forward to the content I offer.

To my mind, online video should open a space in which to breathe for the viewer, not fill a hole hungry to consume.  In line with the bespoke, artisanal value promise of my enterprise, I want whatever leaves my hand to be the best that I can make it.

I called my vlog The Melbourne Flâneur because I wanted to bring a more ‘pedestrian’ pace to producing online content, introducing Paul Schrader’s notion of the transcendental style in film to online video.

In the video above, you’ll notice my love of ‘leveraging boredom’—holding on shots of ‘nothing’ at the beginning and end, moments of ‘ventilation’ which encourage you to pause, breathe and observe with me in my flânerie.

The fast-paced, high-volume approach to content generation is opposed to the bespoke æsthetic of the handcrafted, artisanal products and services I promote.  To write and publish even a slender volume like Brazen Gifts for Gold took more than a year of my life.

Writing is a true ‘manual labour’, but, as Ulmer observes, it is also a labour of time and being in which we don’t just ‘do’ writing but ‘live’ writing.  To be a writer is to live an artisanal lifestyle.

Value emerges from this condition of artisanship: all the being and ‘life/time’ of the writer is imbued in the bespoke, handcrafted book, not merely in the words he sweats over to make perfect, but in the total ‘livery’ of his libello.

Likewise, in the video content I offer you on this vlog, in which places are allowed to be and breathe, I hope you enjoy a vicarious oasis of valuable respite from the overwhelming pace of our amped-up existence.

How does a ‘Slow’ approach to creating online content resonate with you?  Do you agree that we could benefit from a more thoughtful, deliberative pace to online video production?  I’m interested to hear your thoughts in the comments below.